By Jeffrey Gangemi

University of Wisconsin Business School senior Joe Jennings is kicking back, enjoying his last few months of college life. And why shouldn't he? Jennings received four job offers by the end of the fall semester and accepted a position at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Chicago in late November.

Jennings says he was surprised by how easy it was to land a job. "It was awesome," he says. "I got offers from companies I'd never even heard of -- extremely painless." The 23-year-old, who will earn a starting salary of $53,500 with a $2,000 bonus, is not alone. This year's job market for undergraduates is the strongest since 2000. These job-market improvements are the most dramatic -- and in some cases extreme -- in years.

"There were a few employers that reported some pretty large increases, and I even called a few to see if there were mistakes," says Andrea Koncz, employment information manager for the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), a group of recruiters and university career services officials that researches workforce trends. Recruiters, some of whom had been missing on campus in recent years, have returned -- and they're seriously competing for top talent.

ATTRACTIVE SALARIES.  The numbers paint a pretty picture. Undergraduate hiring is expected to increase by 14.5% this year over last, according to a September, 2005, survey of 256 companies by NACE. The services sector, at 21.6% expected growth, posted the most dramatic increase in the study. Within that sector, computer-software development, financial services, retail, accounting, and engineering are showing marked hiring increases, consistent with the sector overall.

Business students, in particular, are reaping the benefits of the upswing. The data, at least at Wisconsin, indicate that companies are hiring more finance, accounting, and marketing students. As of March, 253 Wisconsin business students had received offers -- 95 in finance, 45 in accounting, and 84 in marketing.

As the number of job offers has grown, starting salaries have posted corresponding increases over last year. Accounting graduates received an average offer of $45,723, a 6.2% increase, according to NACE. Finance graduates saw an 11% average increase in their average starting salary offer, to $45,191 and business administration/management graduates got a 3.9% bump on average, to $39,850.

NO PEAKS AND VALLEYS.  NACE doesn't keep separate data for specific liberal arts majors, but even poets are graduating into a stronger market. The average salary for liberal arts majors as a group is up 6.1% over last year; it stands at $30,828.

Why now and not before? In survey-related interviews, many companies reported that the past year has marked their first significant opportunity to grow since before the dot-com bust in 2000, Koncz says. And that's carrying over to midlevel hiring as well. This year's MBA job market is also strong, reflecting an overall improvement in the economy (see BW Online, 12/30/05, "A Heady Job Market for MBAs").

On-campus recruiting is usually seasonal, but not now. "There are normally peaks and valleys in campus recruiting throughout the year, but we've seen a steady increase in banking, consulting, marketing, sales, health care, brand management, and management-training programs," says Lee Svete, director of the career center at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.

GETTING CHOOSY.  Svete, who organizes the Big East career fair at New York's Madison Square Garden, which took place on Mar. 10, says that the event sold out this year, with 81 companies pitching to about 1,000 students. Organizers had to turn away about 50 more companies because there wasn't space for them.

Small financial-services firms such as hedge funds, private-equity outfits, and asset-management companies, have entered the fray, and even though they may only hire two or three students each, they're taking a slice of the pie from established firms. "All those companies hiring a person here and a person there are affecting the overall demand," says Steve Pollock, president of WetFeet, a San Francisco-based company that offers research and services for both employers and job seekers (see BW Online, 10/27/05, "Recruiters are Slugging it Out").

Companies looking to sign up loads of talent from their on-campus recruiting efforts are frustrated. In some instances, such as at the undergraduate program at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, companies have opened their interviewing schedules to the greater university -- something which rarely happens in leaner times. "This year, I've seen a boutique financial-services firm make six offers that students normally accept without a second thought, and only one accepted," says Barbara Hewitt, associate director of career services at the University of Pennsylvania.

TRICKLE DOWN.  Converting last summer's interns to full-timers is becoming vital for companies that want to level the playing field. As of November, 2005, 59% of undergraduate interns had already received or expected to receive a full-time offer from their internship employer, according to WetFeet. That's up from 43% at the same point in 2003. Companies are moving sooner and extending more offers than they have in the recent past, says Pollock.

Anticipating the same level of competition in the near-future, some companies have turned their strategic focus to recruiting interns who could become next year's full-time hiring pipeline. But even competition for those positions is heating up.

The corporate response? Offer slots traditionally reserved for juniors to sophomores. Svete says seven of the 10 investment banks that recruit at Notre Dame are opening their internships to sophomores, and those firms are filling about two or three slots out of 10 with sophomores.

"HEARD THE WAR STORIES."  No one is sure if the good times will keep rolling. But for now stories are starting to fly about superstar students winning a record number of offers. Zain Gulamali, a 21-year-old senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has flexed his networking muscle to pull in 12 offers so far.

"There are just a lot more jobs right now," says Gulamali. "I've heard the war stories from my friends in the Classes of 2003 and 2004, talking about how hard it was to get a job." Of his 12 offers, Gulamali says he can directly attribute four to the strong economy. The rest he'll take credit for himself.